Going ‘live’ – An easy way to improve pre-recorded podcasts

There’s nothing wrong with the two-blokes-and-a-mic raw feel of some podcasts, especially if your resources are limited. But in looking for quick wins to spice up our Box 19 Sunderland football show we’ve nicked a simple technique to make our recording as interactive as possible.

As well as using forum and email comments to bring the listeners’ voice into the conversation, for episode 13 of the podcast we tweeted live from the recording using Tweetdeck on iPhone. A PC with a net connection would do the same job if you’re based in the office or have WiFi capabilities.

We flagged the experiment by setting up a box19 twitter account and contacted competition entrants and other emailers from around the world to tell them when we’d be recording the show. We even included a handy timezone guide so our pals in North America and Down Under could set their alarm clocks or take a break from watching their version of the X Factor respectively.

As a result we had a handful of fans following the show ‘live’ and throwing in questions for our panelists. Definitely a great way to break up the chat and engage the audience.